What if you could enjoy the very things that other people find hard to endure?

What if you could choose what things build you up and make you feel good?

Can you imagine the implications of developing such a skill?

Let’s take a couple of examples to explore the possibilities.

An NFL superstar runs uphill sprints after his paid practice is over.  A computer programmer learns a new programming language by reading through a training manual for 1 hour each day after work.  A woman wakes at 5:30 AM to ride her bike to a nearby soccer field where she runs sprints before returning to her house to start the day.  It’s hard to imagine any of this being all that fun or enjoyable.

Depending on the kind of circles you currently run in, you may or may not believe what I’m about to tell you.

There are already people out there doing these kinds of things on a daily basis and enjoying them as much or more than anything else they do during their day.

I know, because these are all real life examples of people who have experienced varying levels of natural and purposeful brain washing, resulting in enhanced energy, enjoyment, and passion for pursuits that would leave most people drained and feeling sorry for themselves.

Let me first explain how natural brain washing occurs in daily life and then we’ll come back to purposeful personal brainwashing and how to use it to your advantage.

The power of belief is overrated in the physical world, but extraordinarily underrated in the world of the mind.

It’s because of the power of belief to change and influence our mind that all of the results in the physical world manifest themselves.  If you have no idea what I just said or why I would have said that, count yourself lucky for having bypassed the seductive trap of wishful thinking represented by books such as “The Secret.”

Natural brain washing is the cause of historic accounts of people dying from the curses of witch doctors.

Belief is very powerful within a person.

Natural brain washing is the cause of the extraordinarily powerful placebo effect, which has been increasing in scientific research studies during the past decade due to the increase in money that drug companies are pouring into television advertising, touting the benefits of their drugs.

That’s right, the beneficial effects of fake drugs (sugar pills designed to look identical to the actual drugs) have been increasing in general across all forms of drugs studied during the last 10 years.

This perplexing phenomenon has led to great angst for the drug companies whose advertising efforts are now backfiring by making it more difficult to prove that their pills do more than a sugar pill.

Proving that your pill does something significantly more powerful than a sugar pill is a necessary requirement for passing through the FDA’s standards for bringing a drug to the market.

It’s not just the advertising though.  Drug companies have also become more sophisticated in designing their drugs in such a way that people believe they will be effective.

For example, it has been discovered that a blue colored pill generates more positive expectation of powerful results than other colors.  As these kinds of findings are integrated into the development of actual pills brought before the FDA for approval, guess what?

You got it, the little blue placebo pill just increased in its power to do whatever the other drug (the real drug) was supposed to do.

Did you know that the placebo effect can cause pain to vanish, cause people to sleep, cause people to wake up, calm anxiety, relieve depression, and even cause people to think they are drunk (and act drunk too)?  That’s natural brain washing in action.

Care to learn how to harness it?

1. Accept the fact that all of your experiences in life are heavily influenced by your expectations and beliefs.  The same event can be experienced in a variety of different ways depending on expectations and beliefs that you hold below the conscious level of thought.

1. Start small.  The smallest and easiest way to begin nurturing your ability is to shift your experience by changing beliefs rooted in your emotional responses to negative events.  I’m talking about negative events like feelings of the irritation when you miss your ride by 2 minutes, or when you’re standing in line at a store with a checkout clerk competing for the Guinness Book of World Records slowest checkout clerk category.  Some of you already have this step mastered to some degree.  Either way, develop the ability further with specific focus on changing the unconsciously held belief that gave rise to the feeling that the world was wronging you in each of these situations.  When you feel you were cheated because the subway left a minute early and you were only a minute behind, practice taking on a belief that will support an immediate and positive shift in your mood state.  For example, bring back to mind the fact that most people in the world will never have the privilege of motorized transportation on a daily basis.  Remember that you are lucky to have shoes to walk in if you did need to walk to work (many people around the world walk miles bare foot every day to get some water).  Remember how nice it feels to walk into an air conditioned home or workplace while recalling the generations of people who thrived and enjoyed their lives before air conditioning was invented.  What you are trying to do is shift your belief away from the unconsciously assumed belief that the world is out to get you.  Bringing up the sensation that you are a lucky person requires only a subtle shift in the beliefs you are activating at any given moment in time.  Remember, these are only the baby steps, designed to increase the frequency with which you access and manipulate your own belief systems.
2. After practicing step two for at least three weeks, you may be ready to begin shifting your sensory experiences.  While still only a baby step, this is the next natural step in the progression of your trust in your ability to shift your experience by shifting beliefs with your conscious intention alone.  The reason it is the next logical step is because sensory experiences respond more readily to shifting beliefs compared to other experiences.  If what I described next seems a little farfetched to you, remember that these shifts occur all the time by natural means outside of your conscious intention.
   1. Start by increasing your awareness of your surroundings.  Practice for brief periods of time lasting around 15 to 30 minutes.  Intend for your mind to be capable of tracking movement and sound around you in a 360° radius.
   2. You cannot succeed by “trying hard.” You succeed by shifting your belief regarding what your mind is capable of.  Beliefs are shifted better by using memory and effort.  Think of it as a relaxed form of allowing memory and conscious intention to meld.  Remember a time when you became acutely aware of someone behind you.  Let the memory of the awareness of the other person be like a guide as you shift back and forth between the imagination-based memory experience and your present real-life experience.
   3. With practice, you will begin to notice that your mind starts to see patterns in the movements and sounds, with nearly automatic predictions of what will happen next based on pattern recognition (in the same way that you naturally learn to swing a tennis racket to the location your mind has predicted the ball will be based on its trajectory and speed).
   4. Practice step three with a focus on developing belief.  Don’t get too caught up in developing the ability to be aware of more of your environment.  Instead, strive to make leaps of trust in your ability to shift sensory experiences by simply expecting the sensory experience to change.
      1. When you start to have a small amount of success with step three, pick something useful that is worth some time investment.  For example, you might choose to apply personal brainwashing by linking a trigger to a desired outcome such as sudden feelings of confidence or magnified concentration to use at work.
      2. Choose an uncommon word or physical experience to link with your desired outcome.  For example, you may pinch the web between two of your fingers on your left hand just before each practice session for developing increased concentration.  You would pinch the web of skin and then immediately remember what it feels like to be deeply engrossed with complete concentration on a single mental activity.  You would then adopt an attitude of willing expectation for that same sensation, remembering to use memory and expectation rather than effort to bring about a state of heightened concentration and focus.

This is a very basic version of what is possible.  It would be difficult to explain an entire system of applying positive personal brainwashing in a brief article like this.  The point of this article is to raise your awareness of one of the most fundamental aspects of the world that you live in.  Knowledge is the beginning of power.  Learning to responsibly leverage this form of knowledge has the potential to move your life and your influence to heights that few people even know exist.